So many sweeping statements with no backing of science. Same sex attraction is not a misnomer. If sex is not real and only gender identity is, then are you saying that a lesbian who is not attracted to any transwoman is transphobic?

Trans folks deserve all the legal and social protection in the world but they are barking up the wrong tree by trying to establish that sex is not real.

Back your statements with science and evidence (like the wonderful folks in this thread) instead of empty rhetoric and wokeness.

The way that this comment defines women by their functional roles(menstruating, giving birth) is not surprising. Rad trans is just trad redux. A girl playing with race cars? Oh my God, she must be a boy. A boy owning pink unicorns, she has got to be a girl(literally Jazz's story). You ascribe value to a woman by her traditional functional "uses". In fact, you define a woman(on the off chance that you're not one of the whacky ones asking "what is a woman") in terms of her uses to a patriarchal society: childbirth(for which menstruating is important) and in terms of the stereotypes the same patriarchal society has associated with girls and women for so long. Blue is for boys. Pink is for girls.

Same-sex attraction? Same "gender" attraction? Just say you're homophobic and would rather see a girl become a boy in order to be with another girl rather than see a girl with a girl. The homophobic Republic of Iran literally tops the chart in the number of Sex Reassignment Surgeries. Look it up. And ask yourself why. Sooner or later, you will come to terms with the fact that this gender mania is just conversion therapy redux. You've erased homosexuality and have the galls of correcting same-sex to same-gender? Wow.

A woman who cannot menstruate is still a woman. A woman who has had her uterus removed is still a woman. A woman who has had a hysterectomy is NOT a trans man or man for crying out loud. Oh my God.

Defining a woman as a non-man, shying away from using words like breastfeeding and women is women-erasure, pure and simple and is just re-packaged misogynistic Aristotelian bullshit that " a woman is an incomplete man". It's sane how the rad trans lobby gets away with things today that would easily be called misogynistic a decade ago.

The fact that most of you are uneducated about the LGBT community and/or are not part of it shows. Look I love harry potter but like JK, you all are conflating gender with sex (she frequently does that in her other writings and paints all transwomen by the same brush of opinion). They are not the same thing. Same sex attraction is a misnomer. Sex assigned at birth is biological (unless the sex is changed by surgery and hormones), but gender is your actual identity. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Gay people are attracted to the same gender, not necessarily the same sex.

Instead of saying that women have their unique experiences, one can say that cis women have their unique experiences and that is true. (Honestly even cis women all don't share the basic experiences that everyone defines them by. All cis women don't menstruate or are able to give birth). Transwomen have their unique experiences too and that is also true. But they are both under the larger umbrella of women. Period. Let's not determine the validity of people and their experiences based on our prejudices or who any of you are individually not attracted to. Open your minds. The gender is wide enough to accommodate both kinds of women.

It seems like you've used a common sense approach to arrive at these conclusions over time. I'm glad. Most of us traced the same path. My opposition of the radical trans movement is not one based on a knee-jerk reaction or a lack of empathy. If anything, my opposition comes from a place of empathy and not misplaced empathy which is a recurring theme in the trans debate.

That somehow a 55 year old basic white man with a history of pedeophilia and Autogynophilia(AGP) is somehow more deserving of my empathy and "acceptance" than a 21 year old Jazz who was made to transition at the ripe old age of 11(even before actually) and now at 21 suffers from extreme depression, pathological obesity, and diabetes(all of them established side-effects of taking cross-sex hormones), has gone under the knife countless times for gender re-affirming surgeries, and is now a lifelong patient. We've failed Jazz, as a community BECAUSE of our misplaced empathy and a fear of political correctness. If you recall reading about our community response to a rapid rise in the cases of Anorexia Nervosa a few decades ago in girls trying to conform to insance modelling standards of beauty for women and the craze for a size zero, it wasn't to "affirm" their eating disorder and enabling them to cut more and more calories. The response of both the medical community and the society was to help them feel comfortable in their bodies..body positivity..without having to starve themselves to match some crazy idea of their bodies they had in their minds. Why then is our approach a complete 180 degrees this time around?

That a sociopathic Dr. Sidbh Gallagher is somehow more deserving of my empathy when she routinely enjoys performing double mastectomies on girls with healthy breasts and as young as 12 with clear self-harm scars on their bodies and calls it "yeeting the teets" rather than a growing community of de-transitioners who are censored from sharing their life-experiences of transitioning so young and being cheated by therapists and gender-clinics by skipping the necessary steps of therapy sessions and ascertaining whether it's really gender-dysphoria before putting a teen or a pre-teen on a path to transition. Here's an interview of one such detrans, Helena. Do watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbPzJy9gkY

I truly believe that female-only schools, colleges, swimming pools are vital for especially young girls to be free and grow unbothered by the male gaze or male socialization, not having to modify who they are based off on who they are around.

Ofc I'm not arguing for girls-only schools etc but the ones that do exist, let's not dilute their female-only character. Let's helps set up trans only spaces, where they can be free and be themselves. Common spaces for all genders also exists as they should but none of this should happen at the cost of diluting the existing gendered spaces.

The ramifications of male admission into female spaces like hostels, washrooms, prison cells, especially in a country like India is going to be disastrous and everybody knows it.

And of course you're right, the social and biological advantages/privilege of going through a male puberty are not hidden from anybody. So yes, male privilege is real and doesn't go away just because you start identifying as someone else. It's in your bone-density, your average height, your voice, your shoulders, your muscle-density, your hips:waist ratio.

I've always been supportive of trans rights (i mean, duh). But i feel inclusivity for trans persons should not be = erasing biological born women who continue to be so. Because the experiences of trans folks are not = experiences of someone born as a girl. They both suffer and understand things differently, what's the harm in acknowledging that difference and uniqueness? For eg - If i talk to a transwoman about sexism that I faced growing up as a "girl" in a patriarchal household, she will not relate in the same way that my other girlfriends i.e those biologically born so will relate. Because she didn't live as a girl. Similarly, she will have experiences that only other trans persons can relate to, and i obviously cannot. Can I walk into a trans table talk and say, well since we are all women so I can also talk on trans rights and my opinion should be equally valid as any of the trans folks. No, right? The difference in our realities must be acknowledged. When did inclusivity become = no distinction and difference between any of us? In woke law circles, i always thought gender neutral hostels and washrooms sound so cool, and then i asked myself if I will use a gender neutral washroom, esp as a woman in India and the answer is HELL NO. So I've begin to understand what JK Rowling meant and i think she is right. You can't erase experiences and uniqueness of women (born as women) to uplift another group of people. Sex is a biological and a distinguishing factor, that is science. I mean, otherwise even being hetero or homo would make no sense whatsoever.

Summing-up my thread because I'm not one for long LI threads and this is my first time posting here. Well, almost. The reason I ever posted this here was to gauge the sentiment on this debate within the Indian legal community. I'm a practicing lawyer, like many of you. And I plan on dedicating a portion of my pro-bono time towards this area which is unfortunately up-and-coming. I was merely looking to gauge the kind of backlash to expect. And although it is going to be a tough ride, I know in my heart this is what I need to do and there is not a speck of bigotry where I'm coming from. I have a couple of wonderful lesbian and transsexual friends both online and offline who support me in this and this is a fight that must be fought.

Here's my email ID if any of you want to correspond on this issue, you're more than welcome: higgsboseon@protonmail.com

Trans women in female prisons:

Last year the state of California passed SB 132, a law that requires the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to record an inmate's self-reported gender identity, gender pronouns and titles throughout their term in the facility. They also will allow transgender prison inmates to put in a request to be transferred to a facility that aligns with their gender identity. The Los Angeles Times reported that since the new law came into effect last January the state has received approximately 300 requests from transgendered people and all but six have requested to be moved to a woman’s prison. The state of California is now having to introduce new pregnancy resources and condoms.

(https://wbckfm.com/california-supply-womans-prisons-condoms-biological-men-housed-prisons/)

Countless instances of female inmates being raped by trans women. (https://news.wttw.com/2020/02/19/lawsuit-female-prisoner-says-she-was-raped-transgender-inmate)

And if you are a woman who finds nothing wrong with a man who killed and dismembered his ex-girlfriend and now is self IDing as trans being moved to female prison, then God help women and girls.

https://www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-identified-man-who-killed-dismembered-his-ex-girlfriend-wins-transfer-to-womens-prison-kim-marie-ne-kristoffer-johansson/

On Puberty Blockers and Gender Affirmation Therapy

Jazz Jennings was taken to a 'gender specialist' at 3 yrs old for WANTING TO WEAR THE WRONG SWIMSUIT.

At 11, they placed a puberty blocking implant in his arm.

At 17 they inverted his underdeveloped penis, having to harvest skin from the colon to replace the lost growth.

On TV

The reality show is called I Am Jazz. It airs on TLC. Every single thing about it is scary. I feel for the boy(now girl). Her mother very clearly has munchausen by proxy and everybody is feeding off of that young lady and her popularity. This is very dystopian. Right in front of our eyes. Very Black Mirroresque.

There are thousand of such cases. I'm not exaggerating one bit. Canada, UK, US are goners. If you want to keep up to date with these developments country-wise, I would suggest following @eva_kurilova (for Canada) and a bunch of other radfem accounts on Twitter that you will discover eventually.

As far as misogyny is concerned, if anything, TERFS are now fair game for men and trans women alike to take disgusting potshots at. Go through this thread if you want to know how misogyny is alive and kicking and has taken on a more politically correct form.

https://twitter.com/gaybugfeet/status/1513480304685723651?s=20&t=gTmNuoA-Mp0BBDVIKMofww

Interesting. But I have to ask you to pick a lane. If you do not see any inherent value in female-only spaces, say so. Don't say both: "trans inclusive spaces can be woman-only" AND womb ownership does not create safety.

To say that "womb-ownership" does not create (a great degree of) safety around "womb-owners" is to say that men and women are equally predatory towards women and girls. If so, I haven't heard a more misogynistic and patriarchal construction. Lesbians have had a history of being demonized as being predatory towards women. Your argument is essentially the same.

I, like most "TERFS", have no qualms about having a third category of trans people. My issue is with their admission into female-only spaces, sports, and most importantly self ID. Self ID is, by far, the most impracticable and stupid idea ever to gain so much currency.

You want to present as man or woman, I'm game. You want to use xyz pronouns..I'll humor you. You want to proclaim being a woman is just some pornified version of a drag queen, I will have to stop you right there. You want to self ID as a woman to get admission into female only prison cells? I will resist. You want to put kids on puberty blockers? I will resist. You want to "support" boys in their wish to wear a penis-tucking underwear, I will resist. You want to "support" girls as young as 11 to do under double mastectomy? I will resist.

In the reply below, I will document the manifest misuse of Self ID law. I hope the mod lets this reply go through. This isn't bigotry, this is a matter of survival for some of us.

Some say that this was the Tweet that set everybody off. Same question and you be the judge.

" ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate"

OP here, obviously.

So, this is the tweet that set everybody off. Whether this is tantamount to "kicking the community of the downtrodden", readers be the judge.

"If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth."

A lesson in Biology 101 (which is scientifically proven, unlike Gender Studies 101 or Wokeism 101):

1. Only two sexes exist: Male and Female. The sex of an LGBT person is determined by the reproductive organs and hormonal balance he/she has.

2. Only two pronouns exist: He/Him and She/Her. Pronouns like "Ze", "Zim", "They" etc, are both scientifically and grammatically wrong

3. Only women can get pregnant.

4. Only women can breastfeed

5. If you have a penis and testicles you are a man and you should not be allowed into women's changing rooms or allowed to participate in women's sporting events.

She really showed them. Kicking the community which is by far the most victimized and downtrodden, prone to the most suicides. She was so brave to show them their place. She should be given a medal for demonising a community with less to no rights. It takes great courage to use your ample power and influence to completely discredit their right to exist in society. What a boss.

What do you make of the trans debate, "TERFS", and the cancelation of JKR for advocating for female-only spaces? Self ID has finally in practice come to India if you look at this week's Delhi High Court judgement. If you're a woman replying to this thread, please identify yourself as such. I'm a woman and I'd love to hear your thoughts.